Being both poor and a woman is not easy. Add to that a constant barrage of attacks on your reproductive health, and you've got a nearly impossible situation. Yet, it's something that millions of American women are forced to endure every minute of every hour of every day.

If we want to deliver high-value, quality care to patients and families, we need to invest in better ways to deliver care -- not undermine the agencies that are making real the improvements our health care system needs.

We must draw a line in the sand. We must make clear to our lawmakers that denying abortion coverage in any form on any bill is never ok. Not in the budget, not in appropriations, not in a stand-alone bill. If we believe that reproductive freedom is a constitutional value as important as any other, we have to fight back.

The campaign to eliminate the right to safe, legal abortions is intentional, relentless and political. The consequences are real, personal and frightening. Attacks on abortion rights further entrench discrimination against women.

The Senate reconvenes on Monday, April 13, 2015, facing a vote on H.R. 2. It's a shining opportunity to reclaim leadership for covering abortion care for all women regardless of their income, source of insurance, or where they live.

Republican Senators are playing hide and seek with victims of sex trafficking. The U.S. Department of Justice now estimates that approximately 300,000 American children are at risk of being prostituted in the U.S. -- at an average age of 13 or 14.

The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) has recently stalled due to a provision which expands the Hyde Amendment -- a rider that restricts federal funding for abortion and other health care services.

The Hyde Amendment and H.R.7 target poor women who are disproportionately African-American or Hispanic. They establish a two-class system of medical care, a concept deemed unconstitutional for public education.

On yet another anniversary of Roe, women's health opponents in Congress will mark the occasion by voting for a national ban on abortion at 20 weeks. Even if the ban fails, the right under Roe will still not be realized for millions of women.

Reproductive justice embraces the interrelationship of reproductive freedom, religious liberty, and equality, among other rights and freedoms, as vital to creating meaningful social change and justice for everyone. It means supporting fundamental human rights -- the right to have full autonomy over our bodies.

I believe that a woman, no matter what her economic circumstances, should have access to safe and dignified reproductive health care. I believe that a woman facing an unintended pregnancy is best suited to make decisions for herself and her family.

Since 1976, federal appropriations bills often have forbidden the use of federal funds to pay for an abortion, except in cases of incest or rape. This is known as the Hyde Amendment, after its author Henry Hyde (R-IL). It was an anti-choice response to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

The ACA accomplished many wonderful things for women. It did not, however, change the status quo that stigmatizes and marginalizes abortion, given that it maintains policies that discriminate against women based on their insurance or income.

The ability to control whether and when to have a child are key to the physical, social and economic health of women and families, and access to legal, safe and affordable birth control and abortion are essential to guarantee that ability.

Every woman knows that the decision of whether or when to become a parent is the most personal and has lifelong gifts and impact. The decision affects her physical health and well-being as well as her family.

We will be better off as a country the more equal we are and the more opportunity we provide for the best and brightest to rise to the top, regardless of the economic station people are born into. Unfortunately, we've gotten away from this conviction over the last few decades.

While Roe v. Wade guaranteed that abortion was legal in America, the last four decades have been a struggle to ensure access to that right. As clergy, I see this problem with a pastoral eye. How is it just to deny a woman access to a constitutionally-protected right simply because she is poor?